


The Losing Game

by phyripo



Series: We Were Here [4]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1880s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Legends, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13616976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: The errand boy should know better than to take a mad rich man's offer for friendship, but he's got little to lose. It might be both the stupidest and the greatest thing he does in his life.





	The Losing Game

**Author's Note:**

> I could have chosen a more descriptive tag than '1880s', certainly, but not without spoiling the entire story :v
> 
> Anyway! I continue tormenting my favorite ships, this time inspired by [Drink With the Living Dead by Ghoultown](https://youtu.be/yywGI1H_oyM), although only tangentially, really. Also a bit of Devil Game by Kansas!
> 
> FEATURING  
> Luca - Moldova  
> Noah - Luxembourg

It is the furthest from a dark and stormy night it possibly could have been. It _is_ night, quite late, but although there are still puddles on the street, still the smell of rain making everything else so much more pronounced – all the rotting food and wood and the human smells that permeate the city streets – it is dry now, and the sun has just set.

Luca would have liked it to be a little bit more miserable. It would be quite suited to his mood, for one. He feels entirely drained after another day running around delivering messages he never quite understands, although he could probably piece together what’s happening among the city’s elite if he just tried a little. But then, he isn’t honestly interested in them beyond getting paid.

On this beautiful evening in early May, he is on his way to – inadvisably – blow his hard-earned money on drinks at a nearby bar.

Luca is intelligent, but he’s never claimed to be wise. And most of all, he just needs to let go of everything every now and then. This is the cheapest way.

The regular crowd is already there in the dim, smoke-filled room, and some of them grunt vaguely in Luca’s direction as he walks to the bar, its greying wood a comforting sight.

“Evening, Rotaru,” the barmaid greets. “The usual?”

“The usual,” he confirms, smiling faintly at her. It’s refreshing to see her patched-up, low-cut dress after a whole day of looking at the upper class with their colorful ruches and shiny fabrics up to their chins, all the while feeling horribly out of place. He thanks her when a drink appears in front of him, and spends a while nursing it, looking at everything and nothing and thinking about much the same.

His glass sparkles in the low light of the gas lamp behind the bar, the candles elsewhere in the room, and it’s the only thing there that does. The drink is disgusting. It always is, but it’s cheap.

Somewhere behind him, the door to the bar opens and closes, and a curious hush settles over the crowd. Luca blinks his hair out of his eyes and turns to look, and then inadvertently catches the eye of the man by the door, the one who must have come in seconds before. It’s piercing across the room. With a shiver, Luca looks away. Then back at the man.

He’s dressed in dark colors, but the fabrics shimmer, silk and damask and a watch chain running to the pocket of his waistcoat. His hair is blond, maybe light brown, underneath a felt hat, and absolutely immaculate; so is his facial hair. _Rich_ , undoubtedly rich. What in the world is he doing in this part of the city?

Luca quickly turns back to the – equally perplexed – barmaid when the mysterious man starts making his way through the bar, in his direction. Conversation starts up again when he’s passed, and Luca can’t help but look through his own messy hair when he gingerly sits down on a stool only one or two down from Luca’s own. He leans forward to order something from the barmaid, who thrusts her cleavage at him to no avail. She shares a bemused look with Luca, who shrugs helplessly.

Then widens his eyes when she puts a glass in front of him filled with – it looks like wine, but not wine Luca can afford.

“I—” he starts, but the barmaid interrupts him.

“Rich fellow insists. Says he’ll take your tab.”

Luca jerks up and looks at the rich man, who catches his gaze again and holds it while he puts his hat down. His eyes are light, but rimmed with dark circles that stand out in his pale face.

“Alright,” Luca says absently, unable to look away. He hears the barmaid snort in the background before she shuffles away.

Well, if there ever was a reason to run up a tab, it’s this, he decides. Vaguely, he wonders if the man wants anything from him – nothing comes without a cost, in his experience, and he can’t imagine this does – but he’ll get around to seeing about that. Eventually.

For now, he drinks the wine, which is rich and much better than anything he’s ever had before, and orders another one. He can feel the mysterious man’s gaze on him almost continuously, but it doesn’t feel so bad, all things considered.

After a while and a couple more drinks, he turns to the man. It’s late, and more people are at the bar now, so Luca moves over a stool, settling right next to his benefactor.

“So, what do you want from me?” he asks, leaning an elbow on the bar. His sleeve sticks to the wood.

The man looks at him intently. He even looks rich when one doesn’t take the clothes into account. Although he is pale and obviously tired, he is also undeniably well fed, and his narrow nose and high cheekbones all scream aristocracy.

“What makes you think I want anything from you?” he eventually asks, arching his brows. “Perhaps I’m just a bit eccentric.”

“In this city?” Luca asks cynically. To his surprise, the man actually quirks a smile at that, even if it is a rather wry one.

“Good point.”

“I’m very smart.”

“I see, I see.” He frowns slightly. “I’m Noah Krier, and if you’ll listen, I have an offer for you.”

Intrigued but wary, Luca motions for him to continue. Even his voice is aristocratic, all perfect pronunciation and careful vowels. It’s almost too perfect, almost as if it’s a learned thing, as though he taught himself how to fit into the elite like Luca can’t even be bothered to try.

“I am in need of a… Someone to keep me company.”

“And by company, you mean…”

“Nothing vulgar,” _Noah Krier_ hurries to assure him, although his light eyes blaze a curious path down Luca’s body that might suggest otherwise, so quickly that he’d have missed it if the man weren’t so damn interesting. “Just friendly company around the house. Someone who will accompany me when I leave the city for a few days.”

“I can’t do that, I’ve got work to do,” Luca tells him.

“I will cover your expenses,” Mr Krier interrupts, carefully enunciating each word.

He’s weird, he’s so obviously weird, but Luca can’t help but be curious.

“For how long do you need a _friend_ , then?”

Mr Krier huffs. “Four months, until the end of August. I have other plans after that.”

“How often have you tried this?”

“This is the first time, I assure you.”

Luca smirks. “I’ll bet you tell all of them that.”

A dismissive hand gesture; the glint of silver on his fingers, maybe even some precious stone.

“Unimportant. Are you willing to keep me company?”

Luca thinks about it. What has he got to lose? He has no family left, not for several years now, and his life is a boring monotony of working and drinking – and eating something other than potatoes if he’s lucky.

“Alright,” he says, “I’ll do it.”

“Excellent. What is your name, might I ask?”

“Rotaru, Mr Krier. Luca Rotaru.”

“Luca.” He smiles now, ever so slightly, then holds out his long-fingered, ringed hand to him. “Please, call me Noah. We’re friends now, after all.”

This should be interesting, Luca thinks as he shakes the cold hand. Good.

 

 

 _Noah’s_ house, as it turns out, is a massive mansion on the outskirts of the city, in the hills near the river, where the air is clear and the landscape sprawling.

Once he’s there, after a carriage ride that seemed to last hours and hours in the early morning bustle of the city, in the narrow and filthy medieval streets and alleys, Luca decides he’s made a good decision by accepting the weird offer. Even if Noah Krier turns out to be a murderer – at least he will die happy, knowing that he won’t rot away in the attic where he lives or out on the streets like a rat.

He decides not to tell his new ‘friend’ this. Few people appreciate his morbid humor. Luca is always surprised by that. Why make the city worse by always being so serious?

Noah opens the door himself, now dressed in more color. He still looks pale, though, and the veins in his face stand out starkly, blue and nearly black. Maybe he’s sick. He’ll tell Luca if he deems it important, he supposes.

“Good morning,” the man just says now.

“Good morning,” Luca returns. He shuffles his scruffy boots on the white stone steps leading to the door.

“Well, come in. I’ll show you around.” Noah steps back to him into the large hall, then ambles in turns ahead of and next to him while he shows him his house.

Luca has been in the halls and drawing rooms of many a rich person’s house in the city, but never has he actually had the opportunity – or inclination – to explore any further. Noah’s house is fascinating, though. He has a flushing toilet, and even a room with electric light, while the rest of the rooms are lit with gas lamps. Luca usually counts himself lucky if he has a candle.

As it’s almost summer, none of the fireplaces are lit, and it’s remarkably, pleasantly, cool inside. Flowery wallpaper greets him everywhere. The wallpaper on what Noah says can be his room is a slate grey. It matches his eyes.

“Wait, my room?”

“Whenever you wish to stay,” Noah explains, brow furrowing. “Unless you don’t like it. I think the Yellow Bedroom would also—”

“No, it’s – I adore this room, _Noah_ , I just…” He looks into it again, past the four-poster bed and through the gap between the heavy blue curtains into the large garden. “I can’t possibly repay you if I stay here.”

“It would be enough if you did stay,” he says. He’s leaning against the doorpost when Luca looks at him, remarkably casual. “I understand that I’ve put you in a strange situation, Luca, but I honestly am lonely. I want company, that’s all, and I think the very fact that you are here means that you want the same.”

Luca chews on his lower lip, thinking. In a way, he knows Noah is right, but admitting that to him is another matter. Despite everything, he still has some sense of pride. So he walks to the window instead, trails his dirty fingers along the soft fabric of the curtains and looks at the sunbathed flowers and hedges below. The sky is a stark blue. No one is in the garden. Now that Luca thinks about it…

“Don’t you have any servants?” he asks, turning back to Noah, whose green eyes are intent on him, but his gaze flits away when he replies.

“Not anymore. It’s a long story.”

Luca lets go of the curtain and walks back over to him, stopping too close. Noah looks down at him, although surprisingly not that much. Somehow, he seems much taller from a distance than he is up close, and Luca never unfolds himself fully. He thinks of it as a form of protection, and is aware he looks younger than his years.

“You’re a peculiar man, aren’t you?” he asks Noah. It might be the end of this all if he takes it as an insult, _or_ …

Noah laughs drily. “Thank you, Luca.”

 _Or_ it could be the start of something interesting.

“I’ll stay when I can,” Luca promises, and he has to look away when Noah’s pale face lights with something like relief.

 

 

It’s surprisingly easy, when Luca thinks about it, to spend time with Noah Krier in his empty mansion or its gardens, or even on day trips to the river where he wears straw hats and gets mud on his shiny shoes.

It turns out that they both don’t know anything about plants, and the lack of gardener means the beautifully trimmed hedges and rosebushes are getting wild. They dedicate some less hot afternoons to trying to remedy that. Luca doesn’t know if they quite succeed, but he does know it’s both strange and rather nice to see Noah looking less than perfectly composed as usual, even if he’s obviously not healthy. The veins on Noah’s arms stand out against his skin, paler there than on his face.

On a few occasions during May and June, Luca even manages to talk him out of his waistcoat. It’s immensely satisfying. He looks handsome no matter what he wears, but that is another topic entirely. Mostly.

On a particularly hot day, when they are both sweaty, Noah refuses to let Luca have dinner until he draws himself a bath and washes. It’s been ages since Luca has actually had a warm bath, let alone one with nice soaps, so he luxuriates in it, all the while mildly in wonder about the realization that Noah must draw his own baths as well. He doesn’t have anyone here to do it for him, after all, and Luca knows he cooks and cleans for himself.

After dinner, while Luca is still in the dining room – one of three dining rooms in the house – he asks about that. For a second, Noah gets a closed off expression on his face, as tends to happen when Luca asks something that is apparently painful to remember, which most notably includes the topic of his siblings. Luca still isn’t sure whether they’re still alive or not.

A moment later, though, the man seems to shake it off and smiles at him.

“I wasn’t always so…” He gestures around, at the flowery wallpaper and the unlit chandelier and the polished dark wood of the table.

“Rich?” Luca suggests.

A huff. “I was going to say fortunate, but I suppose the difference is not that great. We weren’t always poor as I grew up, but sometimes, yes… I’ve never forgotten how to take care of myself.”

“What happened?”

“To me?” He scratches at his small beard, brown streaked with blond. “I was lucky. The rest of my family less so.”

Luca is silent for a moment, watching the evening sunlight play with the contours of Noah’s face. At this angle, the shadows under his eyes are nearly invisible, but Luca knows they’re there. He could trace the veins with his fingers, could smooth the tired lines around his mouth but also the crinkles of laughter, rarer a month ago than now. Against all odds, Luca has grown rather fond of the madman who decided he needed a friend.

“Sometimes I doubt you take care of yourself,” he says softly, turning to him.

Noah raises thin eyebrows.

“I just mean…” Cautiously, Luca reaches a hand to his face, smiling when Noah goes nearly cross-eyed trying to follow its path and then sighs in something like resignation. He touches his fingertips to the man’s cheekbone. Slides them ever so lightly to his jaw, over the visible veins. Noah is still enough that Luca can see when his breath stutters, just a little.

“That’s different,” he says. “It’s…”

His brow furrows while Luca drags his fingers across his jaw, warm skin and short hairs and solid bone underneath. It isn’t an angry furrow, though. More like a saddened one.

Not even thinking about it, Luca reaches up and smoothes it out with his thumb. When Noah laughs a startled laugh, he realizes how wildly inappropriate he’s being and quickly draws back. He’s always been someone who touches others a lot. It isn’t usually appreciated; apparently, it isn’t _seemly_.

“Sorry,” he stutters. “I’m—”

“Don’t be,” Noah interrupts. “Luca, I promise I’ll tell you – everything you want to hear. But not yet.”

“Then when?”

“Let me worry about that,” he replies. And then, while he hesitantly reaches out to touch the angle where Luca’s jaw meets his neck, “Let’s have drinks.”

He goes, in a whirl of flower-patterned green waistcoat and pristine white silk, leaving Luca with more questions than answers.

Nevertheless, drinks are drinks. He follows.

 

 

During the next weeks, Luca manages to get in more mostly-innocuous touches. He makes it into a game of sorts, whereby he awards himself points every time Noah touches him back.

The balance shoots up rather quickly. Luca attributes it to the fact that Noah apparently wasn’t raised in the stiff environment of the elite of the city, cared for by governesses and private teachers. He must have joked around, played with his mysterious siblings as Luca had done with his brother in better days.

When, at the end of the second month of his friendship – now genuine – with Noah, the man starts initiating touches, Luca decides to abandon his point system altogether and start worrying instead that he has let himself get carried away. In more ways than one. He’s missed days of work already, isn’t sure if he will be able to pay the due rent for his draughty attic room.

He also wonders about Noah, and the terrifying fact that he knows exactly what he wants the man to be to him, and how completely unacceptable it is. Never mind that Noah seems… Susceptible to the feelings, that it sometimes seems as though…

It must be wishful thinking, Luca keeps telling himself.

“Luca,” Noah says, coming down the main staircase. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

He looks gorgeous, as always, even if he’s obviously just had a bath and his hair is still damp, falling across one eye in dark blond strands, and he’s grumbling at his sleeves, which remain unbuttoned. Luca smiles at him, then quickly looks away.

“It’s good that you’re here, though,” Noah continues, halting close to Luca at the foot of the stairs. “Might I ask a favor of you?”

“Of course.” Curiously, Luca lifts his gaze again, keeping it somewhere around Noah’s mouth – _no_ – his forehead.

“Would you mind fastening my sleeves for me?” he asks, thrusting one arm forward. Silk slips down his wrist. Luca looks at that, then wordlessly nods and sets to work fastening the row of tiny buttons at the end of the sleeve. Noah is warm, and he smells nice, and his breathing is steadily ruffling Luca’s dark hair.

When he’s done with left and moves on to the right sleeve, Luca makes the mistake of looking directly at Noah. He’s been trying to avoid that for days. He knows his fellow errand boys are gossiping about what he gets up to already. There’s no need to – well, anything.

“Luca.”

His jaw clenches. “Yes?”

Softly, Noah asks, “Will you stay?”

He says it as if it’s important, as if it isn’t a question he’s asked many times before.

“I don’t know,” Luca replies. He hasn’t stayed in the Blue Bedroom for a week now.

“Luca,” Noah says again, and now he raises his free hand and runs his long fingers across the short hairs on Luca’s jaw, brushes his thumb over the corner of his mouth. Luca looks at his throat where it disappears into his collar as he continues, “Please stay.”

“I need to do my job,” he tells the pressed corners of Noah’s shirt. The fingers are still on his face, tracing absentminded patterns into his greasy skin. Noah smells like soap, and he’s too close.

There are more reasons why he can’t be _that_ to Luca, why he couldn’t be even if he were a woman. Luca is an _errand boy_. Almost two and a half of the four months he was promised have already slipped by, and then what? Will he return to the city when Noah gets on with his mysterious _other plans_?

“Then stay longer,” Noah says in a near-whisper, and Luca can’t help but look up at him, let himself be caught in the green gaze. “Don’t go back. We’ve got a month and a half.”

“I can’t – I…” Luca squeezes his eyes shut. He’s still holding Noah’s sleeve, half the buttons done up.  Warm skin under his fingertips. “ _Why_?”

“Do you really want to know the answer to that?” asks Noah. He looks mildly pained, but his fingers skim across Luca’s neck softly.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

Noah is still for a long moment, eyes searching on Luca’s. His left hand turns over, fingers on the inside of his wrist. Then, he moves, slowly, until all Luca can see is him and all he can think is _yes_ so insistently that it drowns out the _no_ at the back of his mind.

He pushes forward himself, and then he’s _kissing Noah Krier_ , pressing them together even as they both pull back as if startled, noses bumping and breath irregular just from that short touch. Luca’s heart beats in his throat.

“Luca,” Noah says. Luca reaches up and wraps his shaking arms around the man’s neck.

“I’ll stay, then,” he says, because all things considered, it’s much better here than it is in the city center. Noah kisses him again, hard but with a smile on his dry lips.

They have drinks to celebrate, Luca wakes up to the green of Noah’s bedroom, and he thinks that even if none of this holds up outside the walls of the Krier mansion, it will have been worth it.

 

 

“Those four months,” he asks Noah from time to time, “what happens at the end of them?”

And every time, he receives the same answer.

“I can’t tell you yet.” Noah says now as well, even as he arches most gracefully under Luca’s touch and he wasn’t making many comprehensible noises seconds ago.

“Why not?” Luca leans forward and presses his lips to Noah’s chest.

“It’s something that – _something_ – I promise I’ll tell you, but don’t stop doing that.”

He can live with that.

The days pass by, the end of the summer approaching fast. It’s beautiful out here, quiet and peaceful. Luca takes many walks on the estate, with Noah and without him. He cooks, because it is actually an enjoyable thing to do when one has the ingredients, and Noah attempts to teach him to play the violin, which is nothing short of a disaster but more of an opportunity than he’s ever had.

They don’t go out, building a small world of their own on the grounds Noah owns, only interrupted every once in a while by people delivering necessities to the house. Luca can’t help but laugh when he realizes that Noah pretends to be one of his nonexistent servants when he answers the door, tugging on an old coat over his immaculate clothing.

This, in turn, somehow leads to Luca being clothed by an amused Noah, who ‘accidentally’ stabs him with a pin more than once as he attempts to make his own clothes fit better on Luca’s body.

“You’re not that much taller than I am,” Luca protests, looking over his silk-clad shoulder. Noah just pats his lower back and shushes him. “You’re a strange man, Noah Krier.”

“You like that about me,” he says. “And you look amazing in blue.”

Luca has to admit he does both those things.

Still, as the end of August nears, he notices that Noah seems to become paler by the day. He seems anxious as well. It’s nearly the end of the four months. Luca _has_ to know, although he feels as though he probably doesn’t _want_ to.

After a search across the grounds after dinner, when they often go their separate ways for a while, Luca finds Noah in their bedroom, sitting on a chaise longue with his back to the unlit fireplace, looking out of the window at the setting sun. His mind seems miles and miles away, and he only looks up when Luca sits down next to him. A faint smile tugs at his lips when he presses a glass of wine into his hands.

“It’s time,” he says, then takes a large gulp.

“Time for what?”

“Do you know what the date is?”

“August 25,” Luca replies. It’s a date that’s etched into his heart forever, but he doesn’t think Noah knows that.

“It is.” Noah looks at him with tired eyes. “You always ask what happens at the end of the four months, and I owe you an explanation that’s long overdue. I didn’t think… I never thought it would be so difficult.”

Luca waits, sipping his own wine slowly. Perhaps he should have chosen something stronger.

“When I was seventeen, I lost… Everything,” Noah starts. “There was a fire, in the city. Many people died that day.”

Luca’s breath stutters, but he nods. Taking another large gulp of his wine, Noah continues as he stares out of the window again.

“My brother and sister, our parents, they were all lost.”

“But you survived,” Luca says, reaching for him. When Noah’s gaze meets his at last, it’s filled with sorrow.

“I didn’t. Or I shouldn’t have. I don’t know what happened, Luca, but I remember being in my childhood home. It seemed like a dream, and it was empty but for a man I didn’t know. He gave me a choice.”

Noah swallows, and Luca reaches for his free hand, terrified of what he is going to say but knowing he needs to hear it.

“I could go back and he would grant me anything I wanted. For a price.” He bites his lower lip, and his eyes shimmer with tears. “I was so _stupid_ , Luca. I should never have…”

“What did you choose?” Luca asks. “You lived.”

“I lived, in a manner of speaking, but instead of bringing my family back with me, instead of saving everyone who lost their lives that day, I asked for fortune. I shouldn’t even be alive, and all of this…” He shakes his head and gestures with his glass, spilling droplets of wine on the floor and the chaise longue. “It’s worth _nothing_.”

Luca is shaking, clenching Noah’s fingers. “What was the price?”

“I, Luca, please know I’m not— I wouldn’t—”

“ _What was the price, Noah_?” he snaps.

A deep breath. “I would get ten years on earth, and at the end, I was to compensate by paying with my life.” He pauses, and Luca thinks that perhaps that’s all, but then he finishes, “Or – or the life of someone else. Someone I care about. An equal exchange.”

He looks down at their intertwined hands, tears now streaking down his face, clinging to pale eyelashes.

“So that’s what I am?”

“No, Luca, that’s not what you are.” With visible difficulty, Noah wrenches his gaze back up, flinching at the coldness he must see in Luca’s eyes. “It’s been ten years since that fire, and I haven’t been truly happy during all that time, until I met you. I didn’t deserve to be, and you – you were meant to be nothing more than a barter chip, because that’s what I’d been planning, but, Luca, I… _God_ , I love you.”

“ _Don’t_ tell me that,” Luca spits, standing up. His glass shatters on the floor, spilling shards and red liquid over their feet. “You don’t have the _right_ , Noah Krier, when you traded _money_ for your siblings’ lives. For so many lives.”

“Luca—”

“ _My brother died in that fire_! You don’t have the right.”

Noah crumples at that, all light leaving his eyes. Luca bites the inside of his cheek, clenches his fist, but he can feel the tears welling in his own eyes.

“I’m still so selfish,” Noah says, falling off the chaise, dropping to his knees in the mess of glass on the floor. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d leave. And you should. Just go, Luca. The end of this day will be the end of me, and you should go.”

He wants to. A very large part of him wants to leave Noah to wallow in his selfish misery, but—

“Where would I go?” he asks. “I have nothing, Noah. You’re— All I’ve got now is you. I was twelve when my brother died. I haven’t had anyone since then, and when I think I do, when I finally think that maybe I’ve got _something_ , you take it _away_.”

“I’m sorry,” Noah whispers. His hair falls into his face; he probably hasn’t had it cut in months. He just looks sad, sitting there with his white pants stained, wringing his hands.

“Was— Was this real?” Luca asks. “Are we—”

“Yes,” he says decisively, looking up. “More real than anything in the past ten years has been.”

Suddenly exhausted, Luca lets himself fall down on the chaise longue, putting his elbows on his knees and resting his face in his hands. He sighs, pushes his hair out of his face.

“I don’t like you right now,” he tells Noah, who nods in understanding. If he has a shred of decency, he probably doesn’t like himself much either. “But I – Noah, I do love you. God help me, I do. I just wish we had more—”

The door to the bedroom bursts open, slamming against the green flowers of the wallpaper, and they both jump.

There is a man there, in the shadowed hall, or at least something that carries the suggestion of a human form. He – it – shifts before Luca’s eyes, it seems. All the evening sunlight bends around it in ways it shouldn’t be able to do. Noah swears under his breath and scrambles to his feet. Luca stands up as well, staying by his side against his better judgment.

“Noah Leclercq,” the figure says, and Luca glances at the man in question with one eye. “Oh, no, it’s Krier now, isn’t it?”

There is a flicker where maybe his face is, like an ice-cold grin. Luca shivers. Involuntarily steps closer to Noah.

“I have come to collect my due reward,” the figure continues. Luca grabs Noah’s arm when it seems as though he wants to take a step towards it. Noah looks at him, gratitude in his eyes, although mixed with surprise.

“And who is this?” the voice, at once grating and impossibly deep, soothing and terrifying, booms.

Holding Noah’s gaze, Luca replies, “I am Luca Rotaru.”

“Luca,” Noah whispers, as if he knows something that Luca is only half-aware of. He reaches up and kisses him once, quick but deep and trying to ignore the looming presence by the door. Noah tastes like salt and wine, and Luca makes up his mind. He swallows and turns to the figure.

“I want to make a deal,” he says. Noah inhales sharply, steps yet closer to Luca, long fingers on his waist.

A sound that could be a chuckle emanates from the shadowy presence. Luca clenches his jaw.

“You want to make a deal?” the maybe-man asks.

“I do.”

“I assume you’ll want me to forfeit my right to Mr Krier’s soul.”

“Luca,” Noah says, “don’t, please.” Luca ignores him.

“I want you to give him time. Give us time.”

“Time, yes.” The figure glides further into the room. Somehow, it seems familiar, looking – _feeling_ – like people Luca has known over the years. Like his boss, the barmaid, like his brother. He tries not to look directly at it. “You think I would do that? I came to burn Noah Krier’s soul as it should have ten years ago.”

Noah makes a small sound of distress.

“Like I burned – _oh_ , like I burned your _brother_ , Mr Rotaru. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have him back than this liar? Pride and gluttony are some of the worst sins, you know.”

“I’ve lived ten years without my brother. I’ve had longer with him.” Luca takes Noah’s hand. “I’ve had scarcely four months with Noah, and I need time. We have things to do.”

“How sweet. You understand the terms, don’t you, Luca Rotaru? Your soul, in exchange for the simple commodity of time.”

“Yes,” Luca says. He looks up at Noah, whose fine hair seems gold in the last remaining sunlight, his eyes made brighter by the green of the room. Despite everything, he looks nearly angelic; a light counterpart to the shifting, shadowy figure by the door.

Noah looks at him too. “I love you,” he whispers.

Luca smiles faintly. Kisses him. Then, he turns to the figure, who’s far closer now, having moved soundlessly. The air is unnaturally still around it.

“Then, it’s time,” it says, with the same lisp that Luca’s brother used to have, “that we shake on it.”

A shape with the suggestion of a hand extracts itself from the main shadows, long and dark and somehow _cold_. Gritting his teeth, Luca holds his own hand, cleaner than it has been in years, out. He tries to concentrate on Noah beside him, on his breathing and his warmth. They _need_ time. He needs to tell this man he forgives him.

“More time,” says the man-figure, “for you, Luca Rotaru, and for Noah Krier, and then I will _burn_ both of you.”

The ‘hand’ closes around Luca’s in an icy grip.

“Done,” he says, other hand warm in Noah’s.

“Very well. There is, however, one flaw in this plan, Mr Rotaru.” The fireplace lights with a _whoosh_ behind them, and the figure shifts erratically until it seems to take up all the space in the room, soaking up the light and dragging them both in. Luca can’t move. Noah seems to be trying to crush his fingers.

He realizes his mistake at the same time the figure tells him in a thousand voices at once.

“ _You didn’t specify how much time_.”

**Author's Note:**

> _When it's six to midnight and the boney hand of death is nigh_   
>  _You better drink your drink and shut your mouth_   
>  _If you draw against his hand, you can never win_   
>  _Go ahead… drink with the living dead_


End file.
